Long weekend. Even though she lives a few k away from the track (as the bat flies)– boynton is hearing the annual mosquito-like drone of formula one cars and tourettes-inducing roulettes flyovers. Wish some of the sounds of the Folk Festival could drift up from Port Fairy instead. She’d take the beat of a distant bodhran any day.

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd
‘…We must have someone who can go in, and show ‘em that this googlie stuff is all my eye.’‘I begin to see light,’ said Rick
‘I’ve thought it over. This kid impressed me. He doesn’t bound on to my lap and plead for a trial. He just states quite casually that he’s played the man’s stuff all his life, and that, to him, it’s tosh.’
‘Ah!’ said Rick

Friday, March 07, 2003

Wonderful history of the dude ranch(via quiddity 3/3)The western romance of the ranch naturally spread to Australia. Boynton’s grandmother had a friend who dressed in the style of a dude rancher in post-war inner suburban Sydney. It should be a subject close to Boynton’s heart of course. (The real boynton that is – the character in Our Little Girl. Our namesake.) For it is the "handsome riding instructor" dude who is luring Molly’s mother away on riding excursions, and who is eventually consolation prize dude for Miss B

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl ctd.
Murmurings in the pavilion reached his ears soon after that first defeated batsman had come in. Rick, the gentleman in point, was explaining away his fall, basing his defence, so it seemed, chiefly upon the scandal that the man bowled googlies.

‘Eh?’ Said Mason.
Weldon nodded his head in the direction of the wicket.
'The googlie man,’ he observed
He was just picking up the ball, as Mason’s wandering gaze lighted upon him – a small boy with wild, untrained hair,and shirt sleeves that hung unbuttoned round his wrists; whose trousers, cut on the seafaring pattern, flapped in the breeze as he stepped jauntily away from the wicket.

Boynton is fond of both cricket and nostalgia. Indeed she has often confused the two.
We have been enjoying the after grog blog’s world cup updates – even though Test cricket is her preferred form of the game. (There has to be sufficient space for boredom proper to set in just before the late batting collapse redeems the afternoon) So from a missplaced hankering for a cricket unbesmirched by mammon, and with a yearning for the archaic literary flourish found in old sporting texts, we present, pepys like, serialised snippets from The Harley First X1 by Hylton Cleaver. Information about the author is thin, though it would appear that he was quite prolific around the schoolboy traps in the 1920’s and 30’s.

From Teaching Pillikin to Bowl"Shortly , another wicket fell, and Mason stood up, bracing himself gladiatorially. He stepped casually out of the pavilion, striding defiantly towards the battlefield. As he passed West at the non-batting end, the momentous words, ‘Stick it, Jammy Face,’ then, coming to his crease he realised happily that he was not facing the googlie man…Also Mason was fond of fast bowlers."

Turning once more he shot out his hand and grabbed Rick as he passed.
‘I say,’ said he. “Just come here a sec. I want to tell you –‘
“Half a jiffy,’ said Rick. “Just off to get a hat. Wait a mo."

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

People create internalized and evolving life stories that serve to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future.The Foley Centre examines this Life-narrative data(via lindsay marshall). (Boynton’s going to have to watch her Redemption and Contamination quotient as well as her conflict and denouement now.)

Adventure Gear for your pet. (Boynton swears she doesn’t go looking for these. This link was on a page about a jazz duo)
Protect your dog from being scraped by heavy brush...(do they have protective indoor gear for being tapped with light brush by temporarily unhinged custodian who almost lost it? Or hit by falling kitchen broom in the mad rush outdoors on the scent of a kibble?)
The portable dog ramp would have legs in the suburb over the river. (It has been boynton’s observation in the lab-heavy and 4wd-cluttered precinct of boroondara that all muddy exhausted over 30 pound dogs need to walk unassisted into their SUV)

boynton has never felt the urge to decorate her dogs. Even the odd Christmas hat or ribbon is worn by Douglas with a degree of noble endurance that makes boynton feel guilty about insulting his essential dignity. So in answer to the Presurfer who posted these pet costumes, we would say it’s definitely animal cruelty.

Monday, March 03, 2003

Late night strolling round the side alleys of links, boynton found this review of a 3d slide show of LA architecture. A perfect communal event for retro fiends, who don the glasses and gasp in delight and horror at the vision and fate of California's googie heritage. Wish someone would do a local show. Then by chance boynton found this gallery of 20th century Melbourne architecture. Among the thumbnails are this aeroplane perspective and such icons as Myers… the NGV…and a grandstand. (Boynton used to walk past this twice a week without ever fully appreciating its deco curves. It was usually full of footballers and their brown and gold fans.)
And another chance find was this description of London at Interconnected The present encodes the past. London as a city of reused parts, of pieces accidentally left. But that bits of it are old isn't what defines it.
Boynton was thinking along similar lines walking round a small pocket of Richmond on Saturday night, somewhere between struggletown and tigerland, trying to clear the head of the heritage of old description.

Sunday, March 02, 2003

It's boynton's favourite time of the year. Autumn. Apparently. Because oz goes for the bureaucratic designation of the first of the month instead of the equinox-calculated change of season, there is always this kind of meteorological unease. Like a whisper or a wink under the weather: it's not really autumn yet. Maybe we should call the three missing weeks "the preliminary season" or faux.
Despite believing that the web and google can locate any piece of trivia, boynton had to abandon her quest to find info on when Australia went for the first-of-the-month system. Her hunch is that it was discussed an an intercolonial conference at Corowa, and after the repeated failure of Sydney and Melbourne to agree on a common date, a compromise was suggested by this delegate (second from the left).